


Long Way Down

by Abbie



Series: Long Way Down [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Interrogation, Kidnapping, League of Assassins - Freeform, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Post Season 2, Tommy Merlyn is Alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-02-05 17:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1826506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abbie/pseuds/Abbie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scant weeks after the takedown of Slade Wilson, Felicity is abducted from her bed in the middle of the night. She comes to in a stark white cell to be faced by the inexplicably alive Tommy Merlyn, but breathing isn’t the only thing he’s doing that he shouldn’t be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. If You Get Sleep (Or If You Get None)

**Author's Note:**

> Begun from prompts by notababoonbrandishingastick/Ferggirl and writergirl28.

Felicity bit her lips together, arms wrapped around her knees as she huddled into the corner of the small, bare cell she’d been thrown in… hours ago. She didn’t know how many.

Her hair tickled her cheek as her head suddenly dipped forward, and Felicity gasped, spine jerking straight as she blinked hard at the blurry room to stay awake. She gripped tight fingers in the cotton of her blue, moon-and-star patterned pajama pants, shivering in the cool air, from which her thin black tanktop provided little protection.

She didn’t know where she was, why she’d been taken, or even by whom.

Felicity had been in bed maybe an hour, hour and a half when multiple pairs of rough hands had grabbed her and  hauled her struggling from her sheets, shoved her head in a cloth bag, tied her hands and carried her away.

There had been a long car ride—or van, really, she was fairly sure she’d been tossed into the back of a van—and then silent transference from the vehicle into a building, and finally this tiny cell. Her captors had removed her bonds and the sack on her head and tossed her forward, slamming the door behind her before she could turn and identify them.

Not that she’d have seen much, she scoffed to herself. Everything more than three feet away was a runny watercolor blur without her glasses.

At first, she had shouted and banged at the door—threats, questions, cries for help. After her knuckles and palms had been scraped raw and her voice gone hoarse, she’d given up and waited.

She was afraid to sleep. The _not knowing_ of absolutely everything about her situation was killing her, stretching her nerves taut and dancing on the thin edges. If she slept, what if she missed some vital information, or an opportunity to escape?

What if they _did_ something to her?

So despite that she’d been exhausted before she’d even gone to bed, before she’d even been taken, fear kept her awake much longer.

However, the static emptiness of the room and unchanging situation wore her down eventually, and her head dropped to her knees, back slouching into the wall as unconsciousness finally claimed her.

Some time later, the sensation of a damp cloth dabbing carefully at the broken skin of her knuckles woke her where the door’s opening and shutting hadn’t. Disoriented, Felicity slowly lifted her head and blinked, instinctively tugging her left hand, only for the previously gentle grasp on her wrist to tighten.

Felicity sucked in a sharp breath, focusing her weak eyes on the figure knelt at her feet. Dark, short hair, broad shoulders. A square jaw and strong, sharp nose. Blue, blue eyes fringed beautifully by thick, dark lashes.

Felicity’s brows drew together as her eyes widened in shock, locked on the calm, cool gaze studying her expression as her lips, dry and chapped, parted. “… _Tommy_?”

"I’ve brought you some water," Tommy said, calm and deliberate, as if to a panicky child. "You should drink it."

He lifted a plastic bottle of water to her, but Felicity pressed herself harder into the walls of the corner, tugging ineffectually again at her wrist in his fingers. “You’re _dead_. What the hell is this?”

His face, his voice, they were all right, for all that they were so _wrong_ , but it was the mild, sarcastic lift of his eyebrows that was incredibly, undeniably Tommy Merlyn. Felicity hadn’t know him especially well, but one needn’t know Tommy long to understand he was a wry little shit.

"This is a bottle of water. I would assume you’d be thirsty. It’s been at least a day since you’ve had anything to drink."

"A day? Where am I? Why are you here? How are you _alive_?” Felicity tugged again at her hand, and with a sigh, Tommy released it.

He didn’t back away, however, nor did he lower the water bottle. “Take the water, Felicity. You’ll need it.” He glanced at it and shook it slightly. “Look, it’s still sealed at the cap, it’s not drugged or poisoned.” He looked at her again, his eyes imploring—yet strangely calm. “Just take it.”

Chewing on her lower lip, Felicity shook her head. “I don’t understand,” she muttered, but took the water bottle from him, his fingertips brushing hers warm and dry.

Alive. Tommy was _alive_. This was impossible. Why did everyone Oliver knew keep coming back from the dead? Who was next, Robert Queen?

Felicity tore her eyes from Tommy’s to examine the body of the bottle, searching for punctures and finding the plastic unbroken. Tommy made a strange hum of approval, and Felicity shot him an incredulous, scathing look. “I’m not an idiot, just really confused.”

One corner of his mouth curled up slightly, but otherwise he didn’t respond. Lips pursing, Felicity watched him watching her as she unscrewed the cap of the bottle, raising it to her lips for a sip.

It was tepid, but an intense relief on her raw, dry throat with the first swallow. Carefully, she limited herself, wanting neither to get sick nor to drain the water too quickly if there wouldn’t be more.

Tommy continued watching her as she drank, his posture easy in fitted black slacks tucked into tough, dark boots, the charcoal gray tee shirt completing the outfit to give him a jarringly military look.

Felicity licked her lips for stray droplets and screwed the bottlecap back on, setting it on the floor by her side as she turned her full attention back to the living dead man in front of her. A nauseating sense of foreboding was growing in her gut, and she wanted answers.

"Tommy, please." Hesitantly, she reached out a hand and laid it on his knee, inches from her own. "What is going on? Are you being held here, too? How long had you—what happened when—how are you _here_?”

"How doesn’t really matter, Felicity," he said with a bland smile, surprising her.

She blinked, then nodded slowly. “You’re right, we can worry about that later. Right now we should focus on how we’re going to get out of here. Oh my god, Oliver is going to to be so glad to see y—”

Her words cut off with a strangled yelp as Tommy moved like a snake, his hand flashing out to wrap around her throat, forcing her roughly back into the wall as he tightened his fingers around her neck in a grip just short of choking. “Oliver is the least of your concerns right now, Felicity, and we’re not going anywhere.”

He smiled, calm and friendly and utterly chilling. “You’re right where I need you to be.”


	2. Red Sun Rises Like an Early Warning

Felicity clutched hard at Tommy’s wrist, new fear ripping through her. His grip was firm, just this side of painful, not quite choking. “Tommy, what are you doing, let me _go_ , let me go, please _let me go_.” She blinked, letting tears bead up on her lashes as she stared at him. “Please. Please, I don’t understand what’s going on, just—just tell me what you want, _please let me go_.”

Tommy tilted his head and looked her up and down, something in the tilt of his mouth seeming somehow… disappointed. “Calm down, Felicity. We’ll get to what I w—”

His fingers slackened on her neck, and she leapt at the opportunity, shoving his wrist hard to the side and jerking forward, striking him in the throat with the knife edge of her right hand.

He stumbled back onto his haunches with a sharp gurgle, and Felicity surged to her feet, eyes wildly assessing the room—nothing new, nothing different, blank white walls and sealed door and _Tommy Merlyn_ —desperate for a weapon, an escape, for leverage.

Rasping a curse, Tommy rolled forward and wrapped a hand around Felicity’s calf, just under her knee. Yelping, she jerked her other knee up and caught him under the chin, pushing down with her hands and shoving at his shoulders as his head snapped back with a clack of teeth.

Tommy turned his fall into a roll and came up into a crouch a few feet away, blocking the door. There was blood on his mouth, lower lip split, and as he watched Felicity back slowly into the wall, he licked at the bloodied cut and grinned. “Just when I thought you were going to be boring. I was starting to think Oliver had you squirreled away all this time and didn’t bother to teach you anything.”

Felicity, bracing her hands against the wall, reached down past her confusion and fear and took a hard mental hold of the growing anger at this situation. She was getting really, _really_ sick of being the helpless hostage. “You’re out of luck, then. Oliver’s not the one who taught me anything.”

Shoving off of the wall, she launched toward Tommy, bare feet slapping against the cold tiled floor, as she ran the short distance headlong at him—feinting left just before collision, jerking and spinning right instead. An arm caught her above the knees like an iron bar before she could get around him, and Felicity immediately dropped her weight backwards, Tommy’s grip pulling him forward with her as her back hit the floor, knees curling, feet planting in his gut and bracing—

Just as she prepared to send her momentum into throwing him over her head and into the wall, Tommy dropped his full weight deliberately down on her and sent a fist into her gut.

The breath exploded painfully from Felicity’s lungs, and she fell limp beneath Tommy, legs slipping to either side of his waist as he braced his hands against the floor, staring down at her with an unreadable expression as tears slipped down into the hair at her temples. Slowly, he climbed to his feet and stood over her, feet to either side of her hips.

As Felicity sucked in shallow gasps, she stared up at Tommy and realized for the first time that he was broader at the shoulder and chest than she remembered, trimmer in the waist; he wasn’t by any stretch as muscular as Oliver, but he was by no means the photoshoot-lean billionaire playboy she’d so briefly known.

Weakly, she rasped, “What happened to you?”

His head tilted to one side, blue, blue eyes regarding her calmly. The corner of his mouth curled up, tugging at the cut she’d put in it. “I died. I got worse. I got better.”

Not knowing what to make of this answer, Felicity rolled onto her side and started to curl into herself—Tommy’s boot was in the way. Above her, he sighed, stepped over her and crouched by her face.

Brushing her hair from her cheek almost tenderly, he said, “You know, I’d hoped to avoid damaging you. You made this more difficult than it had to be.”

Glaring up at him, she pulled away from his fingers as much as she was able. “Considering you were also worried I was going to be _boring_ , I’m not really sorry.”

He smirked, deliberately stroking her cheekbone with his thumb to see her flinch. “Maybe it’s contrary of me, but I’m really glad you’re not.”

Pressing her face into the cool floor, Felicity squeezed her eyes shut and asked again, “What do you _want_ from me?”

He grinned at her, the shock of that charming, genuine grin she’d never thought she’d see again lancing through her chest like a bolt of ice. “Oh, Felicity. So much. But why don’t we start with everything you know about Sara Lance.”


	3. Drunk and Driven by a Devil's Hunger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The interrogation begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me a long time to get around to this bit, considering I moved well ahead in the next part of the series. There will be one more piece of this first fic, before it's brought to a close and the story continues in the next installment.

Felicity shivered against the hard back of the chair, chin high and trembling. She glared off towards the blindingly white wall as one armed guard stood behind her, and Tommy crouched before her, tightening the padded cuffs that strapped her wrists and ankles to the chair.

He sighed, reaching out to gently turn her face towards him, his expression the sort of mild regret you saw in a disappointed authority figure. “Now, Felicity. We’d really prefer to do this as cleanly and painlessly as possible. Your cooperation isn’t _necessary_ , but it would be better for all of us.”

She glared at him, wishing she’d given him a lot worse than a split lip in their brief struggle in her cell. “Who is _we_ , Tommy? Who are you working for? What do you _want_ from me?”

He smiled, patting her arm as he stood. “That’s cute, but _we_ will ask the questions.”

She snorted. “That’s _cute_ , you actually think I’ll tell you _anything_.”

"Felicity," he laughed softly, stepping to the side as the door behind him opened, admitting a woman in a white lab coat wearing a facemask, rolling a metal cart. Felicity glanced worriedly from the woman to Tommy, whose smile stayed small and genial and _empty_. “You’re going to tell us _everything_.”

"You’re going to _torture_ me?” Felicity spat, covering her rising fear with scorn. “Have you got thumbscrews and—and knives in there?”

He merely smiled. “Torture _you_? Pretty sure we won’t need to break out the electroshock to get what we need from _Felicity Smoak_.” His lips curled in a decidedly mean smirk. “While the option’s not off the table, we have something that should be a little more… _efficient_.”

Felicity watched in increasing concern as the woman—doctor?—opened a drawer in the cart and removed a syringe containing some clear fluid. “Tommy,” Felicity glanced to him, beginning to panic. The woman pulled the plastic cap off the needle—long and sharp and oh so terrifying—and tapped the side, expelling a little of the fluid to clear any air bubbles. “Tommy, what is that? What is she doing?”

The woman looked at Felicity, then at the guard at Felicity’s back, nodding shortly. Hands clamped down on Felicity’s shoulders and she jumped beneath the touch, cringing as she was pressed more solidly into her seat.

Tommy moved to stand in front of Felicity again as the woman in the facemask moved to Felicity’s right, laying a cool, latex-covered hand on her neck. “Just greasing the wheels, Felicity.”

"Stay very still, or I will damage you," the woman spoke softly but briskly in a cool, detached tone, some unidentifiable accent softening her vowels and crisping her consonants.

"No," Felicity whimpered, chest heaving for breath as the doctor cupped Felicity’s jaw firmly, tilting her head more to the left. "No, please, no, _don’t do this_ , please don’t do this. Tommy, please, please don’t do this.”

Felicity yelped and sank her teeth into her bottom lip as she felt the needle pierce the skin of her neck, followed by a cold, rushing sensation in her vein.

Tommy, arms folded, regarded her calmly. “Relax, Felicity. It’s just, well, think of it as sodium pentathol. Close enough, anyways. Just going to get you a little more talkative.”

Felicity’s heart knocked at her sternum like a jackhammer, and she glared with tear-pricked eyes at Tommy as the woman released her face and stepped back, resenting the hands that stayed on her shoulders. “I have _nothing_ to say to a _dead man_.”

Tommy just chuckled, nodding at the man behind her, who took his hands off her shoulders and, by the sound of his boots, retreated to stand against the wall. “Give it a few minutes and I assure you you’ll feel _very_ differently.”

"You can give it a few _months_ ,” Felicity spat, struggling against the panic fluttering behind her lungs and the creeping, uncomfortable tingling flooding her veins, her limbs, her brain. “Have you _met_ me? I give the world’s best ramble, I can go on and on and _on_ without saying _anything_. Best you’re getting out of me is a string of really awkward euphemisms.”

Tommy’s head shook a little, smile widening. “Sara ever get to hear you babble?”

"She said I was cute— _shit_.” Felicity jerked her head to the left, mouth open in shame and eyes crushing closed.

When she opened her eyes again, despair and fear swirling sick in her gut, Tommy was grinning. “She wasn’t wrong.” He stepped closer, his boots inches from her bare toes. “Now—what did Sara have to say about Nyssa al Ghul?”

"Nyssa?" Felicity echoed, a faint ringing taking up in her ears and a strange detachment settling over her like a wet, clinging blanket. She felt suddenly as if she were floating about ten inches above her body, and like nothing much mattered. Nyssa. What had Sara said about Nyssa. "Nyssa saved Sara. They loved each other. Love? Love, I think. Even with that whole, I-kidnapped-your-mother-because-I-want-you-back, I-poisoned-myself-to-get-away-from-you thing. I don’t think it was Nyssa that Sara would die to get away from, though. Not really."

"Really," Tommy repeated, crouching again and tapping his fingers against her knees.

Felicity watched his fingers tap over the moons and stars on her pajama pants in a sort of distant fascination. “Sara loves Nyssa. It was the League she was running from, not her girlfriend.”

"The League of Assassins," Tommy clarified, and Felicity nodded. He cut a glance at the guard at the back wall, then at the woman who still stood by her medical cart.

Felicity’s brow wrinkled. Something about Tommy’s tone, about his questions…

"The League of Assassins," she murmured. Something clicked. She sat up straight, eyes wide and focusing in on Tommy’s. "Are you a member of the League of Assassins now, Tommy Merlyn?"

Tommy’s brows twitched in surprise, his lips parting. Slowly, he smiled that brassy, deflecting grin again. “Aren’t you the sharp little thing, even under the influence.”

The woman in the facemask commanded Tommy’s attention with a sharp, quiet word—something in another language. Arabic perhaps? Tommy looked at her and rubbed a finger over his lips, nodding shortly.

Turning back to Felicity, he asked. “When Nyssa came after Sara, was that the only time you met her?”

"I didn’t meet her then," Felictiy rejected, head shaking. She blinked owlishly at the way the world was slow to catch up to the motion of her head. "Later."

"When?"

"The night of Slade’s attack," Felicity answered. She squinted at Tommy’s hand, still on her knee, as she thought back. "She introduced herself. ‘Nyssa al Ghul, Heir to the Demon,’" she quoted, snorting. "Like, okay, hi, Felicity Smoak, MIT class of 2009." She frowned, squinting harder. "I think she was checking me out."

Tommy coughed, and it sounded like a laugh. “She fought with you that night?”

"Yeah." Felicity opened her mouth, closed it, shook her head. "Like, not _with_ us, like an argument. Like, beside us. I mean. Beside the others. I wasn’t exactly part of the ass-kicking showdown, obviously. I had other things going on. You know. Damseling.” She made a sour face. “So _tired_ of damseling. At least it was part of the plan.”

"Really." Tommy’s tone was distinctly amused, and it made Felicity frown at him. “‘Damseling’ was in the plan?"

"Oliver needed Slade to kidnap me," she explained. "So he told me he loved me where Slade would overhear."

Tommy’s eyebrows rose, his face smoothing into nonexpression. “Oliver told you he loves you? Interesting.”

"Not really," she sighed. "He was lying."

Tommy blinked at her slowly. “He what?”

"Lied," she repeated, like he was stupid. "It was just so Slade would take me instead of killing Laurel to hurt Oliver." Tommy’s fingers twitched on Felicity’s knee and she stared at them. "Laurel was okay, mostly. They didn’t hurt her, just scared her. Scared me too, held a _huge_ sword to my throat.” Her hand jerked in its restraint, having forgotten she couldn’t move it. “Had scratches on my neck for over a week.” She smirked. “But I bet his was scabbed longer. Stabbed him in the neck with the Mirakuru cure. _Maybe_ harder than I needed to. I _really_ didn’t like him. Called me _w_ _eak_.”

"But you’re not weak at all, are you, Felicity," Tommy murmured, eyeballing her speculatively.

She focused her stare in on him, hard. “ _No_. Give me a chance and I’ll prove it to you same as I did to Slade Wilson.”

He pressed his lips together, fingers tapping again. “Much as I’d like to ask about how the hell you got a _cure_ for Mirakuru, we’re getting off-track. Nyssa fought alongside Oliver and Sara that night, yes? Where did she go after?”

Felicity dropped the back of her head against her seat, sighing. “I don’t _know_. She and Sara left, with everybody else in their goon squad who survived the night. They headed to the docks and I don’t know where they _went_.” She frowned. “Sara hasn’t called me in like a _month_ , I’m _mad_ at her.”

Tommy sighed. “Come on, Felicity. You really expect me to believe you didn’t keep track of her? Sara’s your friend, and you let her go off with a ruthless assassin without keeping tabs on her?”

Felicity shrugged, feeling distinctly boneless. “That would be rude. Sara is a grown woman and a trained assassin _too_. If she needs me she’ll call me.” She frowned. “Or Oliver. Maybe. I don’t know, they broke up and I think Oliver was being weird about it.” She sighed again, louder. “Had other things to worry about than what beach Sara and her girlfriend were going to go lounge and maybe have sex on. Our beach was _way_ less fun.”

Tommy frowned, eyes narrowing. “O-kaaay. Felicity.” He snapped his fingers in front of her face, making her draw her head back up to glare at him. “Felicity, you have _no_ idea where they went? Or what they were planning to do?”

"There wasn’t really time to have a girl-talk about her vacation plans," she snipped. "And don’t _snap_ at me, I _hate_ that.”

Tommy stared at her, hard, the hand still on her knee squeezing just shy of painful. “Think hard, Felicity. What ship did they get on? Where was it bound? Was there anything interesting on the manifest?”

Felicity looked at him incredulously. “Why would I _know_ that? Do I look stupid enough to poke my nose into _League of Assassins_ business without good reason? _While_ busy hopping a plane to a super secret ARGUS prison-island?” She swore, banging her head back against the seat. “And _now_ it’s not so secret.”

Tommy’s smile was clipped. “We’ll get back to that.”

Felicity rolled her head forward again, frowning at him sadly. “We’re not done? I don’t _know_ anything about Nyssa, or where Sara is.”

"Felicity," he sighed her name chidingly. "We’re just getting _started_.”


	4. It's A Long Way Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity's long night isn't over yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a fair warning, this gets a little creepy.

The interrogation lasted for hours.

When the first injection began to wear off, leaving Felicity exhausted and queasy, the guard held her down again as the doctor prepped another syringe, this one containing something murky and yellow.

It hit her like an adrenaline rush, sending her heart racing and lungs bellowing as tingling, uncomfortable alertness woke in Felicity's brain and arced like lightning through her nerve endings. Every sensation was immediately amplified, from the shift of her own hair against her shoulders, the movement of the air across her skin, the weight of her clothing on her body, to even the hard angles of her chair.

Felicity whimpered in discomfort, the over-stimulation an awkward, clashing distraction against the acute focus forced onto her mind. She found her eyes and attention darting everywhere—to the tiny, thin white scars all over Tommy's hands, almost invisible, certainly far fainter than her fuzzy vision should catch—to the neat manicure of the doctor's nails just visible through her gloves, French-tipped white in stark contrast to her warm brown skin and honey-amber eyes—to the grating sound of the rough material the guard was dressed in rubbing cloth against cloth as he shifted his weight behind her.

When the guard's hands fell on her shoulders, she gasped, the feel painful in its concentrated  _unwelcome_. Felicity squeezed her eyes shut, moaning a wordless plea as the doctor moved in and pushed her head to the side again. The second needle piercing her skin was like being stabbed, and she cried out, the guard struggling to press her into her seat as her back arced.

The coolness of the first drug quickly followed, pounding through her veins in a lethargic pulse of detachment that mercifully muffled the intensity of sensation, leaving her feeling rattled and numb at the same time as overly-awake and deeply rooted in her own skin.

Felicity opened her eyes and slowly lifted her chin from her chest, eyes finding Tommy crouching in front of her again. Tears spiked her lashes and her lips, dry and chapped, trembled. Voice a rough croak, she asked, “ _Why_?”

His smile—always  _smiling, smiling, smiling_ —was a small thing, enigmatic and yet vaguely apologetic. “We're not even close to done yet, Felicity, and you've been awake for over 24 hours. We need you focused.”

She  _focused_  on breathing evenly, her stare on him sharpening into a cold, furious glare. Teeth gritted, she spat, “Get it over with.”

As the drugs in her system worked through her, they created a sort of tidal effect in which her sense of time, of immediacy began to ebb and flow. Tommy kept her honed in on him with that tap-tap-tapping on her knees, the sense of his fingertips beating softly still heightened enough to narrow every nerve ending to the rhythm.

She lost track at times of the questions he asked her, of the answers that dragged out of her like a tangle of fishhooks on clear line, strung down her throat and pulling and ripping up from deep in her gut.

He asked her about Oliver, about the Arrow, about their operation—door codes and security overrides. She knew, consolingly, that her team would change everything down to the locks on the doors if she were gone more than a few days.

She may have even told Tommy so.

He chased details of their encounters with various criminals and organizations. He showed particular interest in ARGUS, and some quiet, tiny fear in the back of Felicity's head clutched in terror at a single tiny kernel— _Lyla is pregnant, Lyla is having Diggle's baby, Lyla is where we are vulnerable, we are where Lyla is vulnerable_.

She would pray later that she had managed to keep that litany inside of her skull, that because he had asked no questions directly to lead the words marching out of her, she managed to hold them back.

But she wouldn't know.

—

  
Felicity woke without the memory of having passed out.

She was flat on her back, but the view above her—fluorescent lights and off-white plaster ceiling tiles—was still sharper than it should be. For a moment, Felicity felt queasiness snake through her belly with the fear that she'd been injected with that stimulating adrenaline drug again, but as she squinted, the familiarity of the sensation struck her like a cattle prod.

Gasping, she jackknifed into a sitting position, her fingers gently probing her lower eyelids. She blinked rapidly, confirming in confusion and panic that she was wearing contact lenses she  _definitely_  had not had in when she went to bed—when she was abducted.

She had passed out, and someone had put  _contact lenses in her eyes_.

Heart pounding, Felicity glanced frantically around herself—she was lying atop the thin mattress of a hospital bed; her ankles were handcuffed to the bedrails at the foot—seeing nothing but more  _god fucking damned white walls_. (The contact lenses were even the correct prescription. Everything was  _crystal_  clear.)

There was an IV stand beside the bed, and Felicity stretched out her right arm, only just noticing the line inserted into the vein at the crook of her elbow. The bag hanging from the hook was full of clear fluids.

As she shifted against the mattress, her own legs caught the corner of her eye and demanded her attention, sending a scream of terror and outrage into her throat and lodging it there like a stone.

Those were  _not_  her pajama pants.

“What...” Felicity sobbed, hands held in front of her and shaking as she glanced down the length of her own body.

Her pajamas were gone, replaced by a tan spaghetti-strap tank top—underneath, the soft, negligent support of a wireless bra—and thin black yoga pants.

“No, no, no,  _no_ , this isn't happening, this didn't  _happen_ , I'm dreaming...” Felicity begged, her skin scrawling, breaking out in gooseflesh.

She wasn't dreaming.

She had been unconscious. Someone had stripped her naked, taken even her  _underwear_ , and stuffed her into clothes that  _were not hers_ , but fit perfectly; clothes that offered no protection, barely any warmth.

She had been changed and stuck with needles and  _fitted with contact lenses_. Like an object.

Beginning to hyperventilate, Felicity jerked at the cuffs chaining her ankles, the cold metal biting into her skin. Teeth gritting, she snatched at the IV line in her arm, fumbling it once and swearing as she wrapped it tightly around her knuckles, pulling it at a steep angle to jerk it sharply from her vein—

A door Felicity had barely noticed in the far wall opened, and she froze with the needle still in her skin, the tape holding the line in place inside her elbow pulled taut.

Felicity stared as the doctor who had been present for her interrogation walked through the door, eyes on a clipboard she held in one hand. She still wore that face mask, as if “prisoner” might be  _contagious_. The woman's hair, black and long and straight, was gathered in a tight bun at her nape.

The doctor looked up to find Felicity frozen and staring at her, and the doctor's eyes widened at the sight of Felicity, prepared to yank the IV from her arm.

“Do not do that!” the doctor snapped imperiously, raising a quelling hand. “It is only saline. You were dehydrated. I will remove the needle shortly, you need not damage yourself in a tantrum.”

Felicity's grip on the IV line slackened as she gaped at the doctor incredulously. A  _tantrum_. “How do you think I  _got_  dehydrated?” The other woman ignored her, setting her clipboard facedown on a small white table against the wall to the right of the bed. Felicity thinned her lips, licking them absentmindedly as she realized she was  _incredibly_ thirsty. “How long was I out? How long have I  _been here_?”

The doctor's eyes flicked up to Felicity's but returned just as quickly to her fingers reaching for the saline bag, probing it and checking the levels.

Felicity's nostrils flared, eyes wide and wild. “Don't  _ignore_  me! Who changed my clothes? Where are my things?  _Why_  am I suddenly wearing contacts and  _how did you know my prescription?_ ”

“We have prepared for you, of course.” The doctor answered softly, almost casually, as if Felicity wasn't on the verge of exploding out of her own  _skin_. She proceeded to remove the IV line from Felicity's elbow, taping a small swatch of gauze over the site. “I have performed a work-up on your blood and vitals. Your allergy restrictions and dietary needs will be accommodated.”

“My...  _what_...?” Felicity croaked, uncomprehending. “ _Prepared_  for me?” She began to shake all over, scooting on the mattress til the metal rail pressed into her left hip. “You got what you  _wanted_  from me.  _Please_ , just send me  _home_.”

The doctor pulled a set of latex gloves from her coat pocket, snapping them over her hands before raising her chin to regard Felicity coolly. “Please lie on your side and face the wall.”

Felicity barked a brittle laugh. “Yeah.  _Right_. Let me just stick a  _gun in my mouth_  while I'm at it.” Baring her teeth in fierce desperation, she hissed. “If you aren't planning to let me  _go_ —then  _kill me_.”

The doctor rolled her eyes, fixing Felicity with a droll, level stare. “Do not be melodramatic. You do not wish to die. You have too much fight. You will remain until you are not of use.” She reached into her pocket again, pulling out another large syringe, the needle longer and thicker and strangely more menacing.

Felicity stared at the needle and whimpered helplessly.

The doctor's eyebrows lifted challengingly. “Will you lie down on your side, or shall I recall the guard and Mr. Merlyn?”

Felicity's throat closed in fear and, trembling all over, sick with helplessness, she slid slowly down on the mattress and rolled away from the doctor, fists clenching tight under her chin and eyes fluttering closed.

Fingers pulled her shirt up to her waist, pushed the band of her yoga pants and underwear down to expose the flesh of her hip.

“What are—” Felicity rasped, sucking air in sharply as a cold alcohol swab swiped across her skin. “What are you— _ah_!”

The needle jabbed home unexpectedly—ungently—stabbing deep, not unlike—unlike—

The needle withdrew, a soft gauze square and sticky tape replacing it, and Felicity swallowed hard, looking over her shoulder at the doctor's calm, collected face.

“What was that? What did you inject me with?”

Tape secured, the woman patted Felicity's hip and readjusted her clothing for her. Meeting Felicity's eyes, unbothered, she answered, “Birth control.” Felicity felt like a brick had been dropped in her gut as the doctor continued to hold her gaze. “Your cycle will be controlled for the next six months.” Her eyes crinkled at the corners as if she smiled. “You were due.”

Felicity's mouth fell open in slow, flooding horror. “Birth control?  _Six months_?”

The door in the far wall opened again, and Felicity sat up as the same guard from her interrogation filed in ahead of Tommy, who looked  _frustratingly_  fresh and alert.

The doctor took that opportunity to step away, retrieving her clipboard and stopping Tommy with a hand at his elbow as she murmured something to him in Arabic. He nodded twice, glancing at Felicity before responding in the same language.

“He speaks Arabic,” Felicity muttered in growing shock. “Of course he does.”

She watched numbly as the guard proceeded to the foot of her bed, adjusting the strap of his automatic weapon to hang it across his back as he retrieved a key from a cargo pocket and reached for Felicity's ankles.

Instinctively, she shrank away.

“Felicity,” Tommy's voice was a reprimand, and she glanced over to find the doctor had disappeared, and Tommy stood beside the bare IV stand. “Cooperate, please. I'd prefer not to manhandle you any further.”

Felicity swallowed thickly, moisture flooding her eyes. Questions rushed into her mouth—was Tommy the one who had changed her? Or the doctor? Had Tommy, or the guard, been  _present_?—and she bit her tongue against them, reluctantly straightening her legs and holding  _very still_  as the guard's hands encompassed them.

In short order, her ankles were free, and Tommy was tugging on her bicep to get her to stand, holding her arm as her knees wobbled and she found her feet. She felt weak, exhausted, drained.

She looked up at Tommy, his expression inscrutable. “Why am I still  _here_?”

He smirked down at her. “Because we still need you to be.”

She didn't have it in her to press the issue, and so when he towed her towards the door, the guard falling in at her other side and just behind her, she shuffled along.

She tried to pay attention as they led her out the door and down the hall, around one corner, another, another, through another door, down another hall, two more corners, but she was so hollowed out she couldn't have repeated whether they had turned left or right at the last junction.

Tommy said nothing as he led her through the halls, his hand loosely circling her upper arm. When they slowed, Felicity lifted her gaze from her  _still bare_  toes and saw they were coming up on another doorway to their right—this one bracketed by another pair of armed guards all in black.

Tommy stopped between them, turning Felicity to face the door and setting her in front of him, his hands on her shoulders as one of the door guards turned to a panel behind him.

The door slid open—all Felicity immediately discerned was  _more white_ —and Tommy gently pushed her forward across the threshold.

Frantic, she whirled around to see him standing on the other side of the door, that infernal little  _smile_  on his lips. “Don't worry, you'll see me again soon. In the meantime,” he tossed her a sarcastic little salute, “I'd suggest you try to get comfortable.”

The door slid closed, and Felicity was alone.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Long Way Down](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11067816) by [Hebecious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hebecious/pseuds/Hebecious)




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